So surpassing does Linden make touch seem that even turning the pages of his book becomes a pleasurable experience.
A crisp reminder that the sense of touch is not to be taken lightly.
“Touch is not optional for human development,” writes Linden (Neuroscience/Johns Hopkins Univ. School of Medicine; The Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, 2011, etc.) in this exploration of touch, from the tips of our toes to the tops of our skulls. Touch is critical from birth—“deprive a newborn of social touch...and a disaster unfolds”—and shapes the way we find our ways through the world via the circuitry of this “weird, complex, and often counterintuitive system.” Social touch, on the whole, reinforces cooperation and loyalty, from professional sports players to packs of grooming primates. Depending on the nature of the social touch, it may soothe, reconcile, form alliances and reinforce bonds. Linden peruses the different sensors in the skin, the genetics of hot and cold, the sense of safety communicated by a particular caress, illusionary touches and our knowledge that “pain perception has an anatomically distinct emotional component.” The author also spins out a hilarious story of an intimate yet strange morning with his girlfriend when he experienced significant confusion in the sensation-perception realm, and he provides a dissection of the orgasm that is at once transfixing (Linden’s short course in neurology prepares readers for the description) and worthy of Woody Allen: “When we have an orgasm it feels like a transcendent, unified moment, not merely a collection of disparate sensations. We experience orgasms as intrinsically pleasurable and emotionally positive….For an orgasm, mix together the following ingredients…Serves: 1.” Though the author includes a host of entertaining anecdotes, his narrative is consistently backed by solid science.
So surpassing does Linden make touch seem that even turning the pages of his book becomes a pleasurable experience.Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2015
ISBN: 978-0670014873
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 14, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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